What OpenAI’s TBPN deal reveals about branded entertainment’s limits

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, didn’t see it that way.

“TBPN is my favorite tech show. We want them to keep that going and for them to do what they do so well,” he posted on X. “I don’t expect them to go any easier on us, am sure I’ll do my part to help enable that with occasional stupid decisions.”

His candor was deliberate. TBPN’s value isn’t the production, the distribution or the ad revenue – though the show is on track to generate more than $30 million this year. It’s the fact that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who rarely does press, has sat down with its hosts. That Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has. That Altman himself keeps coming back.

The show, founded in 2024 by former startup founders John Coogan and Jordi Hays, became the place where tech’s most powerful figures would speak candidly. It felt like a conversation among insiders rather than an interview. That took two years to build. It cost OpenAI hundreds of millions to acquire. 

Which is where the branded entertainment parallel gets uncomfortable. Brands are building their own branded entertainment studios on the same thesis – that owned content builds the kinds of audience relationships paid media can’t. Gap hired Pam Kaufman, formerly of Nickelodeon, as its first chief entertainment officer. Other companies like Starbucks, Fanatics and Mazda have made similar bets, staffing up production operations and commissioning original programming. But building an audience from scratch, without editorial credibility or an existing community, is slow and uncertain work. 

James Kirkham, co-founder of brand consultancy Iconic, summed it up: “Once a brand starts thinking in terms of things like formats, characters and narrative arcs, the timeline changes completely though because instead of a three-month campaign cycle you’re suddenly building worlds that unfold over much longer spans, with audiences who return to them the way they return to shows, teams or artists.”

That timeline is a problem, Most brands aren’t built for it. The media industry is littered with expensive experiments from companies that thought commitment to content was the same thing as competence at it – that hiring the right exec or greenlighting the right series would be enough. Sometimes it is. More often, the audience doesn’t show up, or shows up once and leaves, because the content feels like what it is: a brand trying to act like it isn’t one. To avoid that, brands have to accept that the line between where the marketing ends and the entertainment begins isn’t theirs to draw. It’s the audience’s. 

David’s Bridal knew this when it acquired Love Stories TV rather than building its own version. As its president and CMO Elina Vilk explained: “We want to be there when they’re inspired, not when they’re being sold to.” 

The practical reality of that ambition meant dismantling the usual silos. 

“We’ve pulled the teams into the marketing team under our chief creative officer, and it’s integrated into our social cadence.,” continued Vilk. 

Acquiring a way into entertainment is one thing. Keeping the audience once they know is another. That’s the problem OpenAI now inherits. It bought the one property in its world that had already solved what so many brands are chasing:  an audience that doesn’t think of itself as an audience, guests who don’t think of themselves as subjects and hosts credible enough to make both feel true. The show’s value, in other words, was always that it didn’t feel owned. Now it is. Whether that changes anything is the only question that matters, and only the audience gets to answer it. 

“Human connectivity is so important,” said Chris Elrin, CEO of independent celebrity and entertainment agency Attachment. ”I think that’s where you’ll see so many more celebrities and so many more creators. People will want to use them as their vehicles.”

Bottom line: brands like billionaires, from the Ellison family buying CNN to merge it with CBS News to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon mulling his own media venture, are chasing the same thing: not the biggest audience – but the right one.